Researchers at Georgetown University Medical Center have used tiny doses of a leukemia drug to halt accumulation of toxic proteins linked to Parkinson’s disease in the brains of mice. This finding provides the basis to plan a clinical trial in humans to study the effects.

Nilotinib is normally used to treat chronic myelogenous leukemia. Though they found that in low doses it also clears the garbage proteins, preventing their accumulation in pathological inclusions called Lewy bodies and also prevents amyloid secretion into the extracellular space between neurons. Thus those proteins do not form toxic clumps or plaques in the brain.